Performance rankings - 2nd to 5th July 2020

Seinäjoki power their way to the top of our rankings for last week with an important win over Vimpeli


The wait was finally over last week and the Men’s Superpesis returned for a shortened 2020 season. As opening day came and went, we saw some unexpected results, including home losses for Joensuu, Vimpeli and Sotkamo. Here are last weeks performance rankings.


1st Seinäjoen JymyJussit 

Seinäjoki opened their 2020 campaign with a supervuoro win over last season’s league leaders Vimpeli. Seinäjoki had a mixed set of results in this year’s Halli-SM group games with a similar win over Vimpeli being the highlight and a 2-0 defeat to Kankaanpää being the low point. Seinäjoki featured in our performance rankings several times in 2019, but their performance was inconsistent and they finished the season with an equal number of wins and losses. Seinäjoki are top of our performance rankings for last week based on how significant the win over Vimpeli was. If they want to be serious contenders for the championship they have to harness the energy from games like this victory over Vimpeli and replicate it. 


2nd Kiteen Pallo -90


Kitee ended the 2019 emulator season on a high, reaching the post season on the final day of the season. Kitee’s win last week came against IPV who had just come off the back of defeating current champions Joensuu. Despite the first jakso ending in a tie, Kitee made their win look easy with 2 home runs (kunniajuoksu) and dominating on overall success at moving the point runner (60% compared to IPV’s 47%). The season promises to be a challenging one for Kitee and they will have to draw on their successes in games like this one to reach the post-season.


3rd Kempeleen Kiri


It is no surprise that Kempele makes it into the top 3 on this list when you consider the fact that they beat Sotkamo at Hiuka. Sotkamo were unconvincing in their win over Kempele in this year’s Halli-SM; however the regular season promised to be quite different. Kempele’s victory put down a marker that they are not a team that will settle for “bottom of the league” status. 


Worst performance - Koskenkorvan Urheilijat

Koskenkorva have the unpleasant situation of being the only team in the league (at the time of writing) without any points. Koskenkorva managed to put 12 runs on the board across 2 jakso against Vimpeli; however Vimpeli were firmly in control of the game. Whilst the score line did not suggest this particularly, Vimpeli had a staggering 70% success rate at moving the point runner compared to Koskenkorva’s (still decent) 58%. 


Worthy of note - Imatran Pallo-Veikot

IPV earns special mention in this post due to the very different performances they turned out last week. Their win against Joensuu was hard fought and at times inspiring, with Sami Partanen and Tuomas Jussila causing the champions problems. In their second game however, Kitee seemed to dominate as mentioned above. So why am i mentioning them at all? Well, with a shortened season and in particular a shortened post-season IPV could be contenders for a top-8 spot; with performances like last week, they have the ability to beat anyone on a good day, or they could just as easily lose to anyone on a bad day. 

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